Full Circle
by demgrl1991
Summary: With a tear in her eye, Jackie packs up her appartment, and prepares to go home. Home, to Steven. I do not own That 70s Show


NEW YORK, 1989

Jackie slowly placed her favorite book into the box, the last item to go into the last box. She stared around her apartment in something of a trance, looking with glazed over eyes at all her memories. The tokens she'd acquired over her five years in New York. The photos of friends she'd made. Correspondence she'd kept with Donna. Everything from her first day on the show, up to the previous Friday, her last.

She smiled ruefully. It turned out she had made it in show business after all. Sure, sketch comedy wasn't quite how she'd pictured her career at sixteen, but _Saturday Night Live_ was immensely popular, and it more than covered her bills.

Of course, nothing of her life was quite how she'd pictured it at sixteen. She certainly hadn't been planning on single motherhood, and while she loved her daughter, she was sure life would have been easier with the father around. But there'd been nothing she could have done about that. By the time she found out she was expecting, she and Steven had been long past finished, over, el finito. And she'd had one foot out the door, ready to finally leave Point Place. Ready to start her new career, and her new life, far away from the man who had, time and time again, crushed her.

Somewhat angst-ridden, Jackie once again stared off into the distance, pinching herself for being so careless as to think of Steven Hyde. She thought she had gotten past the point where he was of the utmost importance to her, and central to her being, but apparently she was wrong. Her heart still shattered, falling into a million little places at the mere thought of him, or the mention of his name. And why shouldn't it? For three years her world had revolved around him, and the center of her universe, her little girl, was a direct result of their… relations.

Besides. He'd been central to her becoming the woman she was today. Long gone was the shallow, vapid girl who had hung on to Michael Kelso like an extra appendage. Disappeared was the peppy cheerleader who thought her self the center of the universe, and that naturally everything would be simply wonderful. Simply wonderful it was not. He'd taught her the art of being, in his words, 'Zen', of not being constantly combative and involved. He'd nurtured her love of books and reading. He'd shown her that she did not have to be dependent on a man, that she was capable of being her own provider. Well, him and her feminist best friend, Donna.

But there was a flip side. Steven had shown her that she wasn't just some girl for Michael Kelso to cheat on, only to turn around and cheat on her himself. He had woefully overreacted to a completely innocent situation she'd found herself in, and, in a jealous rage, run off to Vegas and come back married… to a stripper. And he'd left his by then pregnant girlfriend in the dust, to fend for herself and his unborn child.

Jackie shook her head, ashamed at herself for going off on _Steven_ when there was packing to be done, children to be fed, friends bid adieu. She had better things to do. She had had better things to do for quite some time now. She was no longer some lovesick teenage girl who spent all her time in the Forman's basement because, well, she had no where else to go, and no one else to go there with. She was a strong, independent woman with a family and a career, a very successful career, of her own.

And to think. It had been only a decade previously that she'd been told, by person after person, that she'd never get anywhere, that all she was fit to be was a trophy wife. In fact _HE_ had been the first one to tell her that, back in Eric Forman's basement.

Well. She'd proved them all wrong. And, more importantly, she'd proven him wrong. She had just come off five years as the star of _Saturday Night Live_ with job offers coming at her from every direction, and was about to begin her new job as a weather girl for News Channel Five. She was about to be nationally syndicated on a news channel.

And, after having left Point Place to go out into the world to prove herself, she was now finally going back home. She had come to a full circle.

With one last regretful sigh, she walked into her daughter's now barren room.

"Come on Beth. We're going home."

Her daughter looked up at her, puzzled. "I thought this was home?" she replied.

Jackie sighed. "No. It turns out they were right all along. Home is where the heart is."

And, defeated, Jackie finally admitted that both home, and the heart, were wherever Steven was. No matter if he'd moved on. She still loved him, even if it was unrequited.


End file.
